Ag safety advocates say farming has changed — now state law needs to

Michele Gran came to St. Paul Thursday as “a mama on a mission.”

Armed with her son, James, and a photo of her other son, Landon, she said, “This is my son Landon. He’s a statistic but he is also a son, a brother … a classmate. I don’t want his death to be in vain.”

Landon died on Aug. 14 at age 18 after his legs apparently got caught in an auger while he was cleaning a nearly empty corn bin on a farm where he worked, two miles south of his family’s hog farm near Norseland. He died in the bin after being alone for hours, his mother believes.

“All Landon ever wanted to do was farm,” she said. “He came out of the womb farming.”

Gran apologized for crying, but said it was surreal to be testifying before the House Agriculture and Food Finance and Policy Division after fighting for new safety measures since her son died in what she believes was a preventable accident.

Sponsored by Rep. Jeff Brand (DFL-St. Peter), HF3224 would create some of those safety measures, allocating $500,000 from the General Fund for farm safety grants and $250,000 for an agriculture safety education program.

Laid over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill, the bill would create a grain storage safety grant program and resurrect a tractor safety program that was created in 2016 but expired last year.

HF3224 would also make permanent a program to reimburse schools and farmers to retrofit older tractors with rollover bars and seatbelts. The Department of Agriculture would reimburse 75%, or $1,000, of a farmer’s cost to purchase fall protection measures, dust collection systems or other safety equipment.

The companion, SF3007, is sponsored by Sen. Nick Frentz (DFL-North Mankato) and awaits action by the Senate Agriculture, Rural Development, and Housing Policy Committee.

“Farming has changed,” Gran said. “The laws need to be changed too, to protect us.”

She said safety measures are long overdue, as some farmers aren’t able to replace equipment that needs to be adapted. The accident didn’t trigger an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation because the farm was too small, Gran said.

“If the farmer had been following OSHA regulations … possibly my son would be alive today,” she said. “I wouldn’t fall asleep at night hearing him cry for me.”

Gran said such augers should be covered, so a foot can’t get caught in them. She’s working with her brother, an engineer, on a lifesaving bracelet similar to a smartwatch that could turn off power to equipment and call 911.

Labor and Industry Commissioner Nancy Leppink testifies before the House Agriculture and Food Finance and Policy Division Feb. 20 on HF3224, which would establish a farm safety grant program. Photo by Paul Battaglia

She wants to start in Minnesota and take the program nationwide.                                                                                                                        

“We’re the backbone of this country and people don’t realize chocolate milk doesn’t come from a chocolate cow,” she said.

James Gran, a senior at St. Peter High School, said his family has multiple grain bins in its front yard, and “you don’t know the danger until it’s right in your face.”

Growing up in the rural area, he said everybody knows somebody who’s been hurt in a farm accident.

A number of students from St. Peter High School attended the hearing; most of them wrote letters to Brand asking him to turn the tragedy into something positive.

Megan Schossow, outreach coordinator for the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center, said agriculture workers are about eight times more likely to die on the job than all other workers, and have a 40 percent higher rate of non-fatal injuries

Gran’s story moved Nancy Leppink, commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industry, to tears. She said she’d been told the department had never appeared before the panel, and it’s “pretty apparent to me our department is absent.”

“We could be a trusted, valued, expert partner,” she said.

Leppink offered assistance to the Agriculture Department, saying every workplace injury and fatality is “the failure of my agency” because they’re all preventable.